Monday, June 13, 2016

Cosmic Trigger Online Reading Group, Week Ten!

Aldous Huxley

By Charles Faris, Cosmic Trigger online reading group guest blogger

Welcome to week 10 of the Group Reading of Cosmic Trigger. This week we are covering pages 70-79 Hilaritas edition, 71-79 And/Or.

We begin with A Discordian signal from Aldous Huxley, deceased, in which The Materialist begins his experiments with Crowleyan techniques for mutating consciousness and winds up with a “cryptic and ambiguous” message from Aldous Huxley.

First off, Bob bans the use of the word “I” and bites his thumb hard whenever he lapses, entering an altered state in 7 days. He announces that he is a psychic and gives tarot readings, although this trick takes 2 years to deliver anything impressive. He also dives into “Crowley’s method for achieving and transcending religious visions.” This method is further elaborated upon in Chekovian (never reveal a loaded gun unless you are going to use it) and/or Nietzschian (Eternal Recurrence with a twist) style a few pages later when The Space Lady returns once again.

Bob claims that working with these techniques resulted in his becoming skeptical of skepticism, and achieving ecstasy and “contact” without drugs. I would be interested is what methods our readers have used, and what results they have achieved thereby.

In The Net or the Network Bob ruminates of Jano Watts’ Net and notes that Aldous Huxley was a friend of Jano and Alan Watts, as well as Tim Leary. Huxley died same day as JFK. Kerry Thornley, the "2nd Oswald," named his son Aldous Wilson Thornley after Huxley and Bob, and Aldous had originally been turned on to peyote by Aleister Crowley, who styled himself Epopt of the Illuminati.

Wilson traces another chain with Alan Watts, who introduced him to Zen Buddhism in 1957, Leary in 1964, and Crowley in 1971, leading Wilson to ponder if he was part of "a Net of coincidence or a Network of adepts."

Dimitrije Mitriniović

Then Bob deftly wraps these two chains around each other (double helix?) by mentioning that Watts had been “initiated into a magickal order” by one Dimitrije Mitriniović, a “rascal guru in the tradition of Crowley and Gurdjieff.”

Key line for me: Alan Watts describing himself as neither a “Guru or a philosopher or even a teacher…I am merely an entertainer.” This seems, as much as anything, to be a fair description of Old Bob himself. An entertainer adept at planting seeds, perhaps.

The Lady of Guadalupe sees Bob quitting his job at Playboy, moving to San Miguel de Allende, first municipality in Mexico to be liberated from Spanish rule. Bob digs into the Illuminati connections of Father Hidalgo, leader of the liberation, and from there steps into the eternal re-occurence of The Space Lady, this time in her guise as The Lady of Guadalupe.

"The Shaman's whole family had now become involved in yoga and magick; weirdness was commonplace." The picture Bob paints of his family life in Mexico is touching and telling—a glimpse into the micro-world of The Author, which he balances with a short description of the crazed events happening in the world at large — “Nixon and Kent State and Cambodia and everything.” And central to it all, Tim Leary’s struggle to remain out of jail, which seems to an emblem of just how hopeful the world appears to Bob at any given moment.

A key passage here is his daughter Luna’s description of how the metaprogrammer works—“You believe in ESP, so it happens around you. You don't believe in levitation, so it doesn't happen around you.” These two sentences, ingested with the proper set and setting, could replace the entire corpus of Bob’s work on programming and metaprogramming. Any thoughts the readers has on the efficacy of simplicity vs elaborateness would be gratefully received in comments!

Standard of Father Hidalgo, Father of Mexico, featuring The Lady of Guadalupe

With so many obscure references dropped like little seeds within the pages of Cosmic Trigger, I’ve noticed that one advantage the reader of today has over the reader of 1977 is that it doesn’t take days and days in a library to (sometimes vainly) follow up on Wilson’s leads. A few of those which I found to be both interesting and enlightening were Alan Watts’ rascal guru Dimitrije Mitriniović, and Father Hidalgo, so I am including links for both of those characters.

And that about wraps up this weeks reading. Next week we will dive into Sirius Rising and The Holy Guardian Angel, pages 79-91 in both of the editions I am referencing. Please feed the conversation with your comments, questions, and cross-talk, and most importantly — Do The Exercises! (And tell us what you got!)

14 comments:

“'You believe in ESP, so it happens around you. You don't believe in levitation, so it doesn't happen around you.' These two sentences, ingested with the proper set and setting, could replace the entire corpus of Bob’s work on programming and metaprogramming."

Since this section talks about the number 23, I cannot resist pointing out the 23 element in the NBA finals game played Monday, the same days as Charles' post, in which Cleveland won an unexpected road victory against Golden State. Cleveland had its player who wears number 23, LeBron James, but Golden State was missing its number 23, Draymond Green. That may well have cost Golden State the game. Green was missing because he took a swing at the other No. 23, James, in the previous game and was suspended. Green was suspended for Game 5 of the finals, linking 23 (two plus three) to the Law of Fives. After Golden State lost, its series lead was cut to 3-2 (in other words, from Cleveland's point of view, the series stood at 2-3)

p.71 At the bottom of the page talking about "Crowley's twist" on the bhakti exercise - I know the exercise he's probably talking about and there's nothing in it that instructs or implies one to "start over with a different god." I've read everything I can find of and about Crowley and have never seen this stated anywhere else except in Cosmic Trigger. If someone knows where Crowley gives this instruction, please let me know. I suspect it should be called "Wilson's twist" - if he didn't outright make it up then it seems a unique interpretation and quite a brilliant one at that! Doing that exercise in that way also appears aligned to Deleuze's interpretation of Eternal Recurrence.

p.75 (appropriately enough!) The verse in the Koran that Wilson calls the "Secret of Secrets" also poetically describes Crowley's theurgic activities so Crowley popping up in the next paragraph makes sense especially regarding the Silver Star.

In "Uncle Bob Explains Everything" the interview asked Bob about the week without the first person. Bob said he found E-Prime even more useful. I tried the week without I back in 1985. I also did a lot of tarot readings in the 80's and 90's. I tried the method on pg. 72 with Aphrodite, Dionysus, the Great Pumpkin, Discordia, Erzulie, Terpsichore, etc.

In 1998 Bob invited me to participate in an online Open City Amphitheater Ezra Pound discussion http://members.cruzio.com/~zerocity/pound/ . Unfortunately I don't remember my password, and the administrators can't seem to help. We did that for three years, and when I expressed some continuing frustration with studying Pound, Bob told me to ask him ten questions about Ezra Pound. For one I asked how to use The Canto as a grimoire. He suggested rereading The Cantos and writing down all the references to Aphrodite. He said to then read those passages daily and attempt a connection with Aphrodite as outlined on page 72 of Cosmic Trigger. He said after obtaining contact to do the same thing with Dionysus.

I told him I had trouble finding the references to Aphrodite in The Cantos. He then gave me a copy of A Companion to the Cantos of Ezra Pound by Carroll Terrell.

A friend of Arlen's grew up as a Christian Scientist and told Bob, "Christian Science works, but you have to be dumb enough to believe in it." Bob wrote me that Crowley teaches one how to have it work but not stay dumb.

Since discovering Wilson I've made sure to use various sources for news (MSNBC, CNN, FOX), tried to believe in different political parties and explored several religions with a beginner's mind state. I have became a "true believer" at different times, particularly when a prayer practices is involved. Once I notice a desire to continue to believe a reality map I reset mentally and start over.

I have tried to invoke Jehovah using more mystical methods, and Maat, my Holy Guardian Angel, and Eris with more traditional magical methods. I think my most successful one was an extended operation of invoking Maat sometimes using MDMA. Mostly an eerie change in the environment and mental visions that stop being controlled by my imagination. Alas, Eris was the most recent using Illuminatus as a guide. All signs of success have been subjective so far, nothing too convincing.

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A daily posting from Tom Jackson about my favorite writer, Robert Anton Wilson. I also seek material by or about Robert Shea, Mr. Wilson's collaborator in writing "Illuminatus!" If you have tips, you may write me at tom.jackson@gmail.com. Please put "Robert Anton Wilson" in the subject line.